The Apple Toolchain

The following is a list of common tools used to manage Apple devices. Do you use something that isn’t on this list? Comment it and I’ll try and add it! In order to remain vendor agnostic I am trying to list solutions in alphabetical order by category. A brief explanation of each category, being as follows:

Antivirus: Solutions for scanning Macs for viruses and other malware.

Automation Tools: Scripty tools used to automate management on the Mac

Backup: I highly recommend bundling or reselling some form of backup service to your customers, whether home, small business, or large enterprises. The flexibility to restore a device from a backup when needed is one of the most important things to keep costs at a manageable level and put devices back into the hands of customers in an appropriate time frame.

CRM: Mac-friendly tools used to track contacts and communications with those contacts.

Collaboration Suites: Once upon a time, a Mac server was great for shared calendars, contacts, and email. But most businesses aren’t going to want anything to do with the repercussions of potential downtime that can happen on a mail server. Nothing will get your hard-earned customers to fire you faster than an email outage. So while the Mac server is listed, consider cloud options, for optimal customer retention.

DEP Splash Screens and Help Menus: Tools that make the DEP and service desk process more user friendly by providing more information to users.

Development Tools, IDEs and Text Editors: Tools used when building scripts, writing and debugging software, and manipulating text.

Digital Signage and Kiosks: I put these in here, because I know a lot of organizations that have made a great little addition revenue stream by reselling or deploying these tools on behalf of their customers. I have friends that have also created managed service offerings just around these tools. Overall, it’s a possible new revenue stream and as an added bonus, you’ll likely have an NFR so you can have pretty cool signage in your office (if you’re into that kind of thing).

Directory Services: Tools that provide primarily on-premesis access to a shared directory of services and allow for single-sign on to those services.

File Sharing: Mac-centric cloud and on premises tools to share and synchronize files.

Identity Management: Providers of predominantly SAML based Single-Sign On solutions that federate security for Apple devices to access web-based services.

Imaging and Configuration Tools: Tools used to place devices into a given state or create that state. This includes traditional Mac including tools as well as those built for iOS.

Line of Business: Traditionally Mac-focused solutions that automate various business functions.

Log Collection and Analysis: Centralized logging has been a necessity for large, growing fleets of devices. Modern tools can store large amounts of logs from client computers and allow fast and complex searching so you can triangulate issues quickly and effectively. As an added benefit, you can also centralize logs for network appliances, allowing you to isolate the source of issues across an entire ecosystem of devices.

Management Suites: Tools used to manage settings on Apple Devices. Each is marked as MDM, Agent-based, or both.

Print Servers: Servers that either provide access to printers or allow for more granular printing features, such as cost accounting.

Productivity Tools: Tools you might use to manage lists or other assets.

Remote Control and Management: These tools allow you to take control of the screen, keyboard, and mouse of devices. I can’t tell you which are the best. But I can tell you that I want my remote control solutions to be cross-platform, to be cloud-based, to prompt users for acceptance of the remote control session, and to audit connections so I know who is taking over what devices.

Print Servers: I’ve always hated printers. Whether the old Fiery print services, a common LPR-based printer, or one of the shared printing services, I still can’t stand managing printers. Printers jam, they break, the drivers seem to be rife with problems for every other operating system update, printers are often connected to via ad-hoc networks (like Bonjour), and you often need special software to access the cool features. All-in-all, printers suck, but these tools might make them just a tad bit easier to use, or if not, help to account for who is using them so your customers can bill their departments back as much as possible.

Point of Sale (PoS): Similar to digital signage, but you might also operate a storefront or track customer data in one of these solutions.

Remote Management: Tools used to take control of the screen of an Apple device.

Security Tools: Tools used to manage firewalls, filevault, and perform other tasks required to secure Macs, based on the security posture of a given organization.

Service Desk Tools: These tools are for ticketing and ticket management. It’s always great if you can pick one that actually integrates with both your billing solution and the various other techie bits you choose to use.

Troubleshooting, Repair, and Service Tools: Tools used to fix logical problems with hard drives, check hardware for issues, repair various system problems, or just clean up a Mac.

Virtualization and Emulation: Not all software runs on a Mac. Customers will have certain tasks that may require a Windows machine. You can use Citrix or a Microsoft Terminal Server to provide for that potential requirement. Or, especially if users need data from their Windows apps when offline, you can use a local virtualization tool.

macOS Server: Shared Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Groupware, accessible from the built-in Apple tools, Microsoft Outlook, and through the web. Should be used in smaller environments, and it is strongly recommended to look at third party SaaS-based solutions as potential replacements for this solution.

Pashua: Creating native Aqua dialogs from programming languages that have none or only limi­ted support for graphic user inter­faces on Mac OS X, such as Apple­Script, Bash scripts, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Nomad: Connects clients to Active Directory environments without binding to Active Directory. And has some other nifty features.

Identity Management

Centrify: Provide federated login across common web services and other SAML-capable solutions, as well as resolve common issues with Active Directory. Also has an integrated profile management tool for compliance.

OnyX: Verify the startup disk and structure of system files, run maintenance and cleaning tasks, configure settings(e.g. for the Finder, Dock, Safari), delete caches, and rebuild various databases and indexes.

I’m using Nulana Remotix as my daily ARD/RDP client. It’s cloud service is beginning to add system monitoring and it supports a couple of BT mice on IOS which is really nice. Multi platform too for days when I only have a Windows Surfave thing with me… rare but happens